RE: Doctypes, Declarations, and HTML Versions

> The DTD is *incorporated* by the doctype declaration.  That is, the
> doctype declaration is where one finds the DTD.

The difference between inclusion and reference here is
interesting but rather abstract.  Inasmuch as it matters
at all, I think reference would have been the better choice.

To create a class of documents, you need to specify
(a) the syntactic rules for instance documents and
(b) the semantic meanings of the tags you will use.

These rules will probably evolve.  There will also be
exceptions where you'll want to incorporate other data
objects.  So you'll also want
(c) some sort of versioning and
(d) extensibility.

SGML DTDs provide (a).  I think "XML Schema: Structures"
aims to provide (a) (b) and (d).  Of course, (b) can't be
formalized, but at least there will be a not-bad standard
place to document tag semantics.

-- 
Jason

Received on Tuesday, 5 October 1999 11:55:40 UTC